Ivory Trade Makes Elephants,
Rhinos Disappear

Brandon Sun “Small
World” Column, Monday, February 24 / 14Zack
Gross

A major conference of
representatives from 50 nations worldwide took place earlier this month
in London. Prince Charles and his sons the Duke of Cambridge and Prince
Harry hosted them and established a new initiative focusing on curbing
ivory consumption, and therefore poaching, which is endangering
elephants and rhinos in Africa and Asia.

Animal poaching is the illegal killing
of animals, usually in order to source their valuable ivory or
fur. In South Africa in 2013, as an example, 750 rhino were
poached. The total global herd stands at 18,000 and at a
certain point, the herd will not be sustainable. Rhino horn is thought
in many countries to be an important medicinal ingredient. In
actuality, the horn is medicinally as valuable as a fingernail or
toenail because that’s what it is.

Elephants and rhinos share the same
fate. A hundred years ago, three million elephants lived in
Africa and today there are just half a million. Poachers
target the most successful elephants as they have the largest tusks,
thus creating even greater risk for the herd. Other animals
at risk worldwide include bear for their gall bladders, big-horned
sheep for their antlers, and tigers and gorillas for their pelts,
organs and bones. All of these are highly attractive and
greatly consumed, especially by Asian markets, with their effect as
medicines and herbal remedies much more myth than reality.

The desire of people to consume these
products leads to poaching. There is huge demand.
Selling to Asian markets brings in money to armed gangs, with the
motive being personal gain, no different than the arms, drug or human
trafficking trade. While poaching was once seen as a more
“innocent” but misguided way for poor people in developing countries to
earn some money, it is now understood to be part of big-time
international crime.

Back in the 1980s, the focus was on direct confrontation with the
poachers and that was successful until the past five years, as Chinese
demand and poaching have noticeably increased again. Thus, governments
today are looking at how to curb demand. As well, East
African governments continue to ask for financial and technical
assistance in order to hire game rangers and track perpetrators in
their vast wildlife parks. Tanzania recently hired 900 more
staff in its wildlife division and dismissed ineffective, if not
corrupt, ministers in charge of conservation. Its capital,
Dar es Salaam has become one of the biggest ivory smuggling ports on
the African continent.

An effective campaign was established to work with Chinese
authorities to convince their consumers not to use or eat endangered
species. A specific target product in the past was shark fin
soup! This led to an 80 to 85 per cent reduction in this practice by
urban Chinese consumers. In the United States, officials are targeting
the purchase of ivory. For example, a person selling a
hundred year old antique ivory chess set is not in trouble, but someone
with a new one is! The Tanzanian government meanwhile reports
that between 2010 and 2013, it confiscated 20 tonnes of ivory.

The great fear of high profile campaigners is the loss of bio-diversity
as species become endangered by Western and Asian
consumption. It is not just the loss of any specific “noble”
animal, but rather the cumulative impact on the environment when
natural patterns change. For instance, when elephant herds
disappear, the germination of new trees stops – no elephants, no
forests! That affects bird life – no forest, no
birds. This, then, will affect insect counts and, therefore,
the instance of disease. With a broken natural life cycle, we
face many problems – they may seem specific to that local area, but
they do have global consequences.

This anti-consumption campaign, along with the Royals, has also
attracted the support of celebrities such as soccer star David Beckham,
basketball’s Yao Ming and actor Jackie Chan. The Clinton
Global Initiative, with Hillary Rodham Clinton as a long-time champion
of wildlife conservation, recently outlined plans for their own
multimillion dollar initiative to curb poaching and trafficking. They
are focusing on the two main ivory markets, China and the US, where one
can get $1000 for a pound of ivory.

Although we tend to want to “Save the (whatever animal)” because they
are cute, the fact is that the environmental consequences are not
always considered by law-makers or evil-doers. To keep our
natural environment in balance, we should be concerned about the loss
of animal species.Zack Gross works
for the Manitoba Council for International
Co-operation (MCIC), a
coalition of more than 40 international development organizations.